If you want to be successful at PR, you need a basic understanding for how the media works. It's a very broad topic, but I've tried to give you a decent overview in the section. After that, we're going to look at some techniques for finding the reporters that are most likely to be interested in your story, and for catching their attention. How the media makes money. Each outlet whether it's a newspaper, a magazine, or a TV show, is targeted at a certain public or audience. And these artists make their money in one or a combination of the following ways.
Advertising. If the outlet has a large enough audience, organizations might pay for advertising space in order to reach that audience subscriptions. Some artists charge the audience to access them. For example, if you want to read Vogue magazine, you have to purchase a copy or subscribe. Events. A lot of media outlets hold rate events that are relevant to their audience.
They either charge for tickets or secure sponsorship, which is when an organization pays to be associated with an event and have access to that event database. outlets that have large databases of subscribers will often sell access to those databases. For example, listening organizations email them, or they'll analyze and survey the databases to produce trend reports that can be sold on to interested organizations. What this means is that the focus for almost any media outlet from the economist to CNN to 17 magazine is building a loyal and engaged audience. The bigger and more relevant their audience, the more money they can make. That means when it comes to producing their content, whether that's writing articles or filming news reports, they need to produce content that their target audience will find interesting, as that will keep them coming back for more.
So as a PR professional, when you're working with the media, you always need Keep the target audience in mind, as you'll get much better results if you do so, it's also worth noting that journalists tend to use social media quite a lot. So always be ready to engage with them on the social networks that they prefer. How the media works is different in different countries. In some places, the media likes to be fiercely independent, and can be quite resistant to approaches from PR. In other places, the media is much more open to persuasion, and you can often get a good result simply by connecting with journalists and including them in your company updates. Bigger isn't always better when it comes to media audiences.
Often it's much more valuable to have a very niche audience. For example, if a publication targets pregnant women, the audience will be limited, but companies that sell for example, maternity clothes, will pay a premium to reach that audience. The best way to reach journalists is to write a story that will save her time and be relevant to her target audience so that she doesn't have to write it As I said at the start of this lesson, the media is a very broad topic. The best way to get to know the media that are relevant to you is to read, listen, watch and subscribe. The best people I've ever worked with are the people who do that. quick recap.
Media outlets make their money through advertising sponsorship events and data. They therefore need to build large loyal audiences. This means that they like to publish stories that are going to be of interest to that audience. The best way to learn what types of stories work for a particular publication is to read it. In the next section. I'll talk you through the typical methods the PR profession uses to engage with the media.